Capitalism, Socialism and Ecology

 There was a time when anyone who spoke of climate change would be identified as a crank and weirdo. Today it is the orthodox belief that has become the language of the Pope, Presidents and Prime Ministers. Every schoolchild understands the meaning of ecology and knows the importance of the environment. Within one generation a revolution in ideas has happened. The outcry against the destruction of the health of our planet is fully justified by the terrible facts. The air is unbreathable. The water is undrinkable. Something has to be done about global warming and carbon emissions, and of course, to a limited extent something is being done, but, importantly too little and too late and the reasons for its slowness and indecisiveness are economic, not technical. Climate summits over the last few decades show a consistent record of failure - unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results sum them up. The Greens and other environmentalists propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. The  Socialist Party can see no reason why COP26 in Glasgow should be any different. We require to discuss the need, with respect to the ecology of the planet, for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving - not destroying - the wealth and amenities of the planet.

 

Nature is being damaged today because the productive activity is oriented towards the accumulation of profits rather than towards the direct satisfaction of human needs. The economic mechanism of the profit system can function in no other way. Profits always take priority both over meeting needs and over protecting the environment. This is why the Earth's resources have been plundered throughout the history of capitalism without a thought for the future, why chemical fertilisers and pesticides are over-used in farming, why power stations and factories release all sorts of dangerous and noxious substances into the air and water, why road transport has replaced rail transport, why human waste is not recycled back to the land, why animals are injected with growth hormones, why goods are made not to last but with built-in obsolescence. The list of anti-ecological practices indulged under capitalism because more profitable is endless. The ecological concern is not just about protecting the environment. It is about human beings too — the way we live and the quality of our life.  With appropriate modification, modern techniques of production are quite capable of providing enough quality food, comfortable housing and decent health for every person on Earth and of doing this without damaging the environment. But the people of the world are up against a well-entrenched economic and social system based on private property, class privilege and coercive economic laws. Reforms under capitalism, however well-meaning or determined, can never solve the environmental crisis — the most they can do is to palliate some aspect of it on a precarious temporary basis. They can certainly never turn capitalism into an ecological society. 

 

With regard to the destruction and polluting of the environment, laws against this are only necessary in a society where the economic tendency is to do this since in a rationally-organised society it just would not occur to anyone involved in producing food to deliberately adulterate it. Laws against plundering and pillaging natural resources are only necessary where the tendency to do this is built-in to the economic system. It also means that such laws, besides being frequently broken, can only be palliatives, attempts to deal with effects while leaving the cause intact.

 

Political campaigners for the environment have a tactical choice to make. Either they go for more laws and restrictions to try to protect the environment or they go for a radical social change to bring about a society in which the environment wouldn’t need protecting. Try to patch up and change the spots of present-day society or work to establish a new society for the lasting and constructive solution?

 

The conclusion is clear: if the present environmental crisis is to be solved and the threat to — indeed the actual degradation of — the environment removed, then capitalism must go. It must be replaced by a socialist society. The only social framework within which human beings could live in harmony with, not at the expense of, the rest of nature is easy enough to discern: it would have to be a society which has the aim of production to satisfy human needs, not to make and accumulate profits. In short, socialism. 

Another Failure?

 COP26 has officially started today. Once again yet another climate summit is upon us all. What should we have expected from such a large gathering? Can we expect anything different from the previous ones? 

 

Much of the media and many of the attendees are hoping with a good deal of optimism for its success. But it is difficult to believe that capitalism will ever heal itself. Whatever pledges that were made at previous COPs, have been reneged on. Promises have come to nothing. As apologists for capitalism, despite being specialists and scientists the delegates continue to fail to locate global problems in a wider social and economic context, in capitalism itself.

 

 A history of failed attempts to fix a system that cannot meet needs leads to the conclusion that a new social system should be tried, a system without money and the profit motive in which the interests and needs of all are paramount.

 

The question people face is: can capitalism deliver? Or far more important question is: what could be done in a socialist society? 

 

With the advent of world socialism, we can expect a considerable reduction in carbon emissions obtained by ending the enormous wasteful economic activity and production inherent in capitalism. A major contribution to this pollution is the upkeep of the military and then all the resources devoted to the exchange economy. 

 

 The enormous budgets spent and raw materials expended on the maintenance of nations’ military machines represent an enormous drain on land, resources and personnel. Insane? No, it's logical, at least within the logic of capitalism.

 

Socialism would eliminate the need for these anti-social industries and thereby rapidly introduce a large cut in energy production and consequently CO2 emissions. This would serve to loosen the reliance on mitigating technologies discussed above but enable the provision of improved living standards to the undeveloped and developing world can be met. People, and not money, will control their lives and the direction of social progress. In the first period of socialism clearing up the structural mess left by capitalism would be a priority project.

 

Capital accumulation is in fact the biggest stumbling block. Effective climate action is against the profit-making interests of much of the capitalist class. In fighting for our civilisation, we are ultimately up against the mindless and heartless ‘growth machine’ that has come to dominate our world. Endless expansion is intrinsic to capital which n is inhuman and anti-human. Capitalism simply does not provide a framework for the rational solution for the problem of climate change. The profit motive has led to an increase in greenhouse gases and so to the real possibility of an increase in global temperature. We should all weigh up the odds of the race between a rational future society of plenty and peace which is the promise of socialism as against the prevalence of capitalist barbarism. 

 

If you think the alternative socialism or barbarism is some hypothetical aspect of the future; we wish to disillusion you for the barbarism that has already been experienced in many parts of the world. But the odds are what we make them. There is still reason for hope, for so long as the working people remain capable of revolt, so long as it is discontent, so long as it exists as a working-class, there remains the possibility of a socialist victory. What do we mean by that phrase, “so long as it exists as a working-class?” 

Like the Communist Manifesto explained, there is the full possibility of the mutual “ruination” of the “contending classes.” And to passively accept the inevitability of an environmental holocaust, as some ecological catastrophists do, is not a revolution.

 

And nothing can be more impossible than the goal of self-survival on a ruined planet. Socialists promote the synthesis of ecological balance, social harmony, personal freedom and material comfort that is humanity’s birthright. We refute the despair of mystical pie-in-the-sky New Ageism. The kind of economy we live in determines the nature of our laws, government, culture, ideas, feelings and ethics. The competitive warfare system of capitalist production produces a destructive, anti-human science and culture. Human beings can learn to understand nature, production and social relations, and change them in a rational manner. Some environmentalists see no difference between capitalism and socialism. But the two irreconcilable systems spell the difference between life and death for this planet’s people.

AWAY WITH THE GARBAGE OF CAPITALISM

 COP26  has finally arrived in Glasgow and what has the blog of the Socialist Party’s Edinburgh and Glasgow branches got to say?

Legend has it that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Not to be outdone, the present ruling class is fiddling about while the planet almost literally burns.

While politicians, corporations, scientists and reformers endlessly argue over what to do with the impending impact of climate crises and how to decarbonise the economy as a matter of urgency, we’ve heard it all before. The only answer is to the throwaway society is to throw away the capitalist political economy, which has produced and entrenched this crisis. It is time now for a new egalitarian economy based on justice and shared prosperity. The claims that climate change is ‘unequivocally caused by human activities and ‘human-induced climate change’ are prominent media headlines but the suggestion that humanity, in general, is to blame is not a scientific claim. It is an ideological one. In this instance, it insulates the capitalist class from being culpable. It is capitalists who profit from the climate crisis while the poorest suffer. It is the capitalist system putting profit above all else. It is technically semantically correct to say that climate change is human-induced. The capitalist class are human after all. However, powerless working people have no choice over the fundamental conditions of production which are driving our climate to break down. Can the coal-miner be equated with the capitalist who exploits them by investing in corporate shares to profit? We are not all equally responsible for climate change. Those who are to blame don’t plan to do anything meaningful about it. Predictably, virtually nothing is being done. It is not the human species, but by that tiny minority element of the species that is befouling the nest of all species. There is no reason inherent in the human species that prevents us from living in harmony with our natural surroundings. Indeed, humanity is itself an integral part of the total environment and no more at odds with it by nature than dam-building beavers.

Capitalism's profit motive is the culprit. The profit motive and capitalism are bringing civilisation to the brink of disaster, and time is running out to take corrective actions where possible or to lessen the effects where the damage is already too advanced to be undone. It ought to be clear that the system primarily responsible for bringing humanity such dangers and which even now continues to ignore the warnings of scientists is not to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars to avert or mitigate the dangers. The answer is to change the system. Environmentalists, limited in their worldview and lacking understanding of the capitalist system are prone to divorce their own particular specific environmental cause from the whole socio-economic fabric. These eco-warriors of capitalist society endlessly flounder, winning, at best, only a delaying action against the disintegrating effects of capitalism on the natural world. University libraries are bulging, research establishments are filled, publishers are glutted and periodicals are saturated with data, hardly anything seems to have escaped the scrutiny of scientists and researchers yet the obvious cause, capitalism, goes unchallenged and uncontested. The scientific community have drawn innocuous conclusions, that the economic system can continue with some modifications without the essential inference that environmental degradation is inherent in capitalist development. Such an inference would, of course, have led to only one conclusion: that meaningful action to repair our world can only be taken when the competitive pressures of capitalism, indeed the capitalist system itself, is abolished and socialism established.

Upon the basis of the evidence accumulated by today's environmentalists, a world socialist administration would take swift, positive and massive efforts to restore the environment. The first step toward doing so, of course, will be to change the basic purpose of social production, from production for profit to production for use -- inherently conservationist in its orientation.  Biologists, botanists throughout society will be part of this reassessment, but we can expect the workers of every industry to evaluate the repercussions of the productive processes they are engaged in where the measure of production will be humanity and the future generations of all living things.  The possibility for a true environmental movement lies within the principles of socialism, for only it can turn the accumulated mass of environmental evidence into effective action to restore and improve the world. This class-ruled society of ours wastefully squanders and devours resources.

Capitalism and its great waste of mankind and nature continue apace. And thus it will be as long as the prime incentive to the industry is private profit, instead of social use. Only with socialism will industry for social use be possible. Then humanity will produce to live, not to waste both the means by which we live and ourselves. Then we will work, not to destroy, but to build.

Green Reformism or Sustainable Socialism?

On the eve of Glasgow’s climate summit, we should make clear the position of the Scottish branches of the Socialist Party and its affiliates in the World Socialist Movement. We've been saying that a revolutionary change is the only way to solve the problems that arise under capitalism since 1904 and movement after movement, reform campaign after reform campaign, has arisen across all these years. If the focus had been paid to the fundamentals, then maybe we'd be nearer a solution.

There's many in the environmentalist movement who challenge an ideology that embraces growth where nations and corporations are locked into this international economic system and there's no way out of it for them. Society won’t be able to control the amount and kind of production as long as productive resources are owned and controlled by a minority. Replacing this by the common ownership of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources under various forms of democratic control is an essential first step before anything lasting and constructive can be done. It is not enough to criticise capitalism but that its critics must put forward a realistic alternative. It is disappointing to find many eco-activists advocating ‘market socialism’ and putting financial capital at the service of people in the form of a universal basic income.  Both are impossible reforms to capitalism and would be meaningless in a world where the Earth’s resources had become the common heritage of all. The Earth can no longer be owned; it must be shared. Its fruits, including those produced by technology and labour, can no longer be expropriated by the few; they must be rendered available to all on the basis of need, a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs.

Murray Bookchin was one of those in the ecology movement who opposed a trend of anti-rationalism and anti-humanism which he called the "counter-Enlightenment". He pointed out in his book ”Remaking Society”  that human beings are both a part and a product of nature; that, despite what "deep greens" say, humans do have a unique significance in nature since they are the only life-form capable of reflective thought and so of conscious intervention to change the environment. It is absurd to regard human intervention in nature as some outside disturbing force since humans are precisely that part of nature that has evolved that consciously intervenes in the rest of nature; it is our nature to do so. It is quite true that at the present time the form human intervention in (the rest of) nature takes is upsetting natural balances and cycles, but the point is that humans, unlike other life-forms, are capable of changing their behaviour.

If humans have a "place" in nature, says Bookchin, it can only be to consciously intervene not just to meet their needs but also to ensure nature's balanced functioning; in this sense, the human species is the brain and voice of nature, nature becomes self-conscious. But to fulfil this role humans must change the social system which mediates their intervention in nature. Bookchin is explicit enough on what this change must be: a change from capitalism, in both its corporate enterprise form and its bureaucratic state-capitalist form.